


Staccato

by HimsaAhimsa



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: AU, Angst, Gen, Post-El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28807212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HimsaAhimsa/pseuds/HimsaAhimsa
Summary: The Great Frontier had offered all that Jesse had envisioned when he’d waxed philosophical with Mike that day at the river.  With its majestic white-capped mountains and balsam-scented air, Jesse thought Alaska might revive him; might provide the antidote to his poisoned soul.  But for his six months’ residence in Cordova, all he has to show for it is an intimate knowledge of canning, the perpetual reek of seafood on his clothing and a yawning solitude so encompassing as to hide him from all humanity, let alone anyone interested in Jesse Pinkman of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and all the atrocities he’s still accountable for.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16
Collections: Blue Christmeth 2020





	Staccato

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vomara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vomara/gifts).



> For vomara, who requested: "Anything about broken families. This prompt also encompasses the Pinkman family, if that’s an option you want to pursue."
> 
> Beta'd by my lovely next door neighbor, who is a retired English teacher. <3

Holly wakes to the sight of her mobile, watches it shake with the movement of her stretches. Orange light filters in through her pink-curtained window, and her belly rumbles, alerting her to the fact that it’s almost dinner time. She rolls up onto her bottom, her diaper ready for a change, and tugs free her sippy cup from where it’s wedged itself between the mattress and the bars of her crib. She sucks at the mouthpiece, tilts her head back but it’s empty. “Mama,” she hollers, ready to play and drink some milk. The door remains closed, everything beyond it silent. “Mama,” she shouts again, but no one comes. 

It’s a good thing that Lucky, her favorite stuffed toy, and her book are within reach—just a slight stretch through the wooden slats, and she pulls them into the blanketed cocoon with her. Mama always says she’s a good girl, and as such, she plops back down with her treasures and busies herself quietly. 

It’s not much longer until Mama comes in smiling, even though she looks like she’s been crying. “There’s Mama’s girl,” she croons, and Holly beams up at her with all her love. Mama: her most favorite person in the world, apart from Auntie Marie and Walter Jr. She thinks there might be some more people in their family—she hears the names Walt and Hank a lot, but she doesn’t know who they are. 

“Are you hungry?” Mama asks as she folds an elbow over the edge of the crib and leans in to smooth Holly’s hair. It feels good, and it almost lulls her for a moment before the state of her empty tummy takes precedence, and she thrusts her empty sippy cup at her mother.

* * *

Junior accepts the proffered beer and sags back against the filthy sofa in his friend’s garage. He takes a swig off the bottle (some brand he’s never heard of but thinks his Uncle Hank would've known) and tries to disguise his aversion to the flavor. It seems the thing to do—to start drinking beer—considering that he’ll be heading off to college in a month. 

He’s got a bank account full of money thanks to Elliot and Gretchen Schwartz (despite how awkward it felt accepting it and the sneaking suspicion that it was his late father’s doing), an acceptance to USC and the world at his feet, but he doesn’t feel like partying. For as much enthusiasm as everyone else exudes when it comes to discussing his plans, all he can muster is a vague hope that once he moves, he will become less distinguishable among his peers, free to live outside the shadow of scandal that his family has cast over him. 

“Dude!” Louis whoops, cuffing Junior with the back of his hand. “Let’s see how fast we can down these!” 

Junior looks down into the bottle, its dark contents hardly visible, like an abyss at the bottom of a chasm. “Sure,” Junior agrees, “why not?” 

He steels himself against the taste as he starts to chug, wiping his hand across his mouth when he finishes. The bitterness curls his tongue, but he thinks he can stand it if it offers him a welcome reprieve from the pain of the past, the difficulties of the present and the unknown that the future brings.

“Hey,” Louis pipes up again, belching before he resumes. “Call your mom and tell her you’re staying the night at my place.”

Junior nods his assent and dials his phone.

* * *

Skyler runs from the steam-filled bathroom at the sound of her cell phone ringing. She barely manages to answer it in time, after rifling one-handed through her bag, her other hand clasping the towel closed at her chest. She puts on her most professional voice, greets the caller with all of the expected enthusiasm of a candidate for hire, sure to bend to their convenience. It’s all for naught, however, and she disconnects the call with more pressure to the ‘end’ button than necessary. 

Unemployment’s up at the moment, as the recession does its share to keep the nation down, but she fears that her inability to obtain work right now has little to do with either of those matters. This is the seventh rejection by prospective employers, who all seemed to share their interest face-to face: _Your resume is great!_ _You’ve got fantastic work experience. We’ll let you know!_

Then, she suspects, they turn on the news, read the paper, listen to the radio, chat with a friend, and the discovery of her past and her marriage to a drug lord negates whatever merit Skyler Lambert (her maiden name, which reverting to has proven futile) has brought to the table in terms of her previous career accomplishments.

She wants to scream at the injustice of it, but she knows she’s half to blame. She won’t play the same martyr card that Walt had played, excusing her transgressions, however justifiable as they might’ve seemed at the time. She intends to shoulder the burden she deserves sans grievance, though she silently longs for a wooden cross of her own, along with a set of rusty nails. 

She has to think of her family, of their safety and well-being. She has to provide for them, and though Marie insists on helping—and Marie is very capable of helping, both physically and monetarily thanks to Hank’s pension, life insurance, benefits, ad nauseum—it strips Skyler of the only thing that makes her feel worthy of her own existence at this point. 

Heavy of heart and light of resources, Skyler pulls on her sweats instead of her slacks and a t-shirt rather than the blouse that she’d chosen to wear to go pounding the pavement in search of a job that might put food on the table, diapers on her toddler and redemption back in her soul. 

She’ll call on the last few prospective employers tomorrow, when she hopefully has a more positive outlook. For now, though, she intends to go easy on herself: she’ll paint her nails or take a nap, but only after she pours herself a healthy glass of cheap chardonnay, the early hour of the day be damned.

* * *

****

Marie slots the coffee pot back into its cradle and takes a few long breaths before resuming preparation of her almost non-existent breakfast. She’d done it again: called to Hank to ask if he wanted a cup of their favorite brew. It’s a habit long formed, and she suspects it will take just as long to break, though she’s not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse. She wishes she could move on from the pain of his death, but with every old habit lost, a piece of him goes with it, his spirit soaring further and further away, and the weight of that grief makes it hard to even breathe, at times. 

She stirs in her creamer substitute, with its pumpkin-flavored this and its no-fat content that, scarcely tasting it for all the effort, but the ritual gives her purpose. God knows, Skyler won’t give her any quarter in that regard. 

Hank had always said that Marie had more energy than any one person should, and even though she works a forty-hour week, there are more than twice as many hours left for her to manage in solitude, when she could be caring for her niece, cooking dinner for her nephew and consulting for her sister. They had more room than they’d needed, her and Hank, and now the house, their home, that they’d dreamed of and bought together, is her refuge alone, and spacious as it is, feels like it should be filled. 

The obvious answer would be for Skyler and the kids to move in, to leave that hovel of an apartment on the wrong side of town, among the wrong sorts of people, but Skyler won’t hear of it. 

Marie simply doesn’t understand, and she doubts she ever will. All she can do is try to get through one day at a time, as they say, from one monumental sentiment to the next, and try to forget in the interim. With a sip off her thermos and a fortifying breath, she gathers her car keys and heads off to work. 

* * *

Jesse maneuvers his ancient truck around the mound of shoveled snow at the corner of his driveway and up the steep and rutted hill to his usual parking space. The steering wheel shudders in complaint of its age and state of disrepair, in need of motor mounts and a slew of other parts and laborious processes that Jesse can neither afford nor has the know-how to remedy on his own, but it really doesn’t matter, he has nowhere left to go. 

He jostles the gear shift into park and kills the engine, grabs the brown paper bag from the passenger seat and navigates the loose gravel of his pathway and the icy steps to the front door of the drafty two-bedroom house that Ed arranged for him to rent. 

Only a scant amount of light remains in the autumn sky, despite the early hour, and even less of it filters through the narrow window above his sink. He flips on the single overhead light but it does little to illuminate the yellowed countertop where he drops his keys, the pervasive Alaskan darkness too substantial for a paltry bulb, let alone a man with demons. 

It’s been a long time since his lunch break at the fish plant, and even longer since food had any flavor. The fresh cuts of salmon and sockeye in his fridge will likely spoil in favor of hunger, yet he feels worse about wasting it than for neglecting his own health. 

The Great Frontier had offered all that Jesse had envisioned when he’d waxed philosophical with Mike that day at the river. With its majestic white-capped mountains and balsam-scented air, Jesse thought Alaska might revive him; might provide the antidote to his poisoned soul. But for his six months’ residence in Cordova, all he has to show for it is an intimate knowledge of canning, the perpetual reek of seafood on his clothing and a yawning seclusion so encompassing as to isolate him from all humanity, let alone anyone interested in Jesse Pinkman of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and all the atrocities he’s still accountable for.

The room echoes with the sound of his boots as he plods over to the table and its single chair, and the subsequent clunk and scratch of the bag as he plops it down on the table and unfurls it. The revolver glints in the gloom as he withdraws it, sets it down then removes the pad of paper and pen. He settles into his chair, unlaces his boots, and begins to write a letter that he doesn’t intend to send.

* * *

Diane pads through the side gate and around to the front of her home to get the mail in her woven hat, her gardening gloves tucked under one arm. She stops to yank out a weed marring the otherwise pristinely kept path on the way, then uses her soiled gloves to dust off the top of the mailbox. 

It’s a light day as far as mail’s concerned. She slips the booklet of junk coupons to the back and sifts through the rest: a newsletter from their lawyer’s firm, another petition for charity from the Phoenix House Rehabilitation Center, an installment invoice from MIT for Jake’s tuition. 

She holds the envelopes fanned out, the return addresses of the first two glaring back at her in judgement, the third a buoy of reprieve. 

For all the times they’ve said it, have heard other parents say the same, she still can’t understand how two children from the same parents can turn out so differently. She and Adam had raised the boys with the same expectations and rules, under the same roof. They’d doled out similar praises and punishments, favoring a firm but loving authoritarian parenting style. Why their efforts failed the first round, yet succeeded the second, continues to baffle them. 

She makes her way back into the house, doffs her hat and tosses the gloves in her gardening basket, placing the mail on the table. She makes some iced tea and steels herself for the chore she’s been putting off for the past few months: packing up Jesse’s room. 

Most of her days consist of very little, lately: making breakfast before Adam leaves for work, running errands, folding laundry, paying bills. She reads, she gardens, she putters. So today, with a stack of boxes and a few garbage bags, the trek up the stairs to her eldest child’s room, untouched for the better part of a year, takes an extra toll on her bones and her soul. 

When she opens the door, her heart clenches. The faint scent of dust and disuse has settled in, but underneath, the room still smells like Jesse. A combination of stale cigarette smoke and weed, dirty boy and the unique, sleepy tang inherent to her first-born son. 

She makes it through the dresser, re-folding the mess of t-shirts and baggy jeans as she pulls the twisted garments out and places them into the bag for donation. 

The posters come down without difficulty or despair; most of them promoting rock bands she vaguely recalls and repugnant cartoons, and she crumples them all, filling the large black garbage bag. 

It’s when she opens the chest at the end of the bed that her cleaning frenzy halts. She discovers her son’s most-loved childhood treasures at the bottom, along with a sketchbook full of his most impassioned work. Tens of illustrations fill the pages, of characters drawn in a hand that lacked skill but bore raw talent in the intuitively curved faces and proportionately correct bodies. It’s perhaps the most effort she ever remembers her son dedicating to anything, and the reality of this talent, this passion having gone squandered and unsupported, the doubt shadowing her own parenting choices, proves too much to bear. 

She places the sketchbook back within the depths of the chest and closes it; closes the door to Jesse’s room and descends the stairs. She lights the burner under the kettle on her way out to the side yard and tosses the garbage bag into the can.

* * *

Holly catches the beach ball that Auntie Marie tosses to her, and squeals with delight. She loves her Auntie Marie. Her smile is so big, and her voice is so happy, Holly knows that Auntie Marie loves her just as much, if not more. She likes that she gets to see her Auntie more these days. She plays with Holly for a long time without having to be so busy, like Mama. Her cooking is yummy, too. She makes the best lasagna, and, when Mama isn’t there, Auntie Marie gives her ice cream. 

Holly likes the purple tones of Auntie’s house. It’s soothing there, and comfortable, with lots of room to bounce her ball and make houses for her dolls out of cushions and books from the shelves. There’s a big back yard, and Auntie Marie tells her they’re going to get her a swing set, and, when the weather warms up again, a little paddling pool as well. 

She misses Walter Junior, who’s in school right now, but Mama and Auntie Marie tell her that Christmas is coming soon, and that he’ll be back; that she will have her whole family there, all four of them, and Holly can't wait. 

With a feisty giggle, Holly repositions the ball, and throws it back to Auntie Marie.

* * *

“Heads up!” a classmate calls, just as a paper plane hits Junior’s arm. The pilot, a blond boy two seats away with white teeth and a surfer’s tan inclines his head toward the crash site, says “check it out.”

The plane, Junior realizes as he unfolds it, is actually a flier for a frat party, advertising DJs and kegs, free admission for girls and a beer pong competition. He doesn’t know this kid, and he still doesn’t like the taste of beer, but he’s starting to realize, with a couple months’ worth of anonymity, autonomy and the absence of pressure—save for whatever goals or challenges he sets for himself—that he’s his own man now—high school and childhood behind him, and if he doesn’t want to drink beer, or any alcohol at all, for that matter, it should be his own business. 

He decides then and there that he won’t let anyone pressure him to drink. He won’t be bullied by friends or acquaintances like he was by his father, who pushed him to drink tequila till he puked into the family pool.

He smiles in polite acknowledgement, slips the paper airplane into his pocket, but he tosses it the moment he returns to his dorm room. He drops his backpack, flops onto his bed and lets the spirit of his clean conscience and new resolve carry him off into pleasant somnolence.

* * *

The sound of a phone ringing needles into Skyler’s awareness, nudging her toward cognizance. It’s her alarm, she finally realizes, and it takes another moment for her to recall her whereabouts, what day it is. She hasn’t slept so deeply in ages, and the lavender walls, the purple bedspread, remind her that she’s at Marie’s. Naturally, the spare bedroom boasts a mattress equal to one at a four-star resort, and though Skyler most likely would’ve scoffed at the indulgence some years back, she appreciates it now. 

She feels refreshed, and furthermore, she’s employed. It’s not a job to write home about: simple data entry, with an insignificant benefits package and sub-par pay, but her foot’s in the proverbial door, with room for advancement. She can provide for her family now, and more importantly, she’s learned to justify the self-care she’s been craving yet didn’t feel she deserved. That understanding, along with some money in her pocket, makes her past somewhat more bearable, especially now, as the story of their scandal begins to go stale.

She’s almost happy now—or as happy as a single mom in her predicament can be. It could have been worse—much worse. But the threats are gone, they’re on stable ground, and she has her sister and her kids. Junior still won’t talk to her, but she hopes he’ll come around with time. 

Aside from her family, hope’s the only thing that’s kept her going. And with that hope firmly intact, she gathers up her new outfit, heads to the bathroom to get ready for work, and pulls the door closed behind her.

* * *

Marie opens the front door, arms laden with grocery bags, and lets Holly waddle in ahead of her. Skyler shuffles to the door at the sound of their entrance, removing her earrings, but still otherwise clad in her business attire.

“Hey,” Marie cheers, “How was your first day of work?” 

She holds her breath as Skyler scoops up her daughter, kisses her, then proceeds to recount her day, which sounds boring to Marie, but the smile on Skyler’s face reveals the most important fact: she’s happy.

Marie yields to her own happiness as her sister expounds. 

Skyler and Holly had moved in a month ago, and Marie hopes that it will become a permanent thing. She’ll likely have to re-arrange her hours, cut down to part time and give up advancement within her own career to watch Holly, but that’s a small price to pay for the joy her niece brings and the part Marie will get to play in raising her, along with the constant proximity to her sister. 

There are still times each day, when Hank comes to mind, widening the hairline cracks in her mettle. Sometimes they split open entirely, letting the wash of emotions gush past the floodgates of her composure. She supposes there’s no help for it, but to let time do its thing. Having her family around her in the interim certainly helps, though.

Marie rests the bags upon the counter as her sister continues apprising her with the minutia of her workday, and pulls a bottle of champagne from one and holds it up. 

Skyler pauses and smiles. 

“We finally have something to celebrate,” Marie rejoices through some tears, and she pops the cork, which hits the ceiling.

* * *

Jesse stares at the wall from his bed as he's been doing for the past several hours, alternately thinking about his plan and shutting off his mind altogether. He's letting his vision blur into obscurity, causing the geometric patterns of the ancient wallpaper across from him to soften, when a crash at the back of his house sends him bolt upright.

It’s the only noise of significance he’s heard in a while, since he pulled the phone cord loose and abandoned his job.

Another crash, then, and he jumps to his feet, swaying a bit with hunger and the sudden change in orientation before he braces himself against the wall. 

He tries to determine the source of the noise, cants his head toward the sound, but he’s lost for ideas. He thinks for a moment that it’s his boss, coming to scream at him for standing them up without so much as a courtesy call, which he admits is fairly shitty on his part, but then he dismisses the notion as ridiculous. Guys like Jesse are a dime a dozen. he won't be missed.

He moves along the wall to the kitchen, where the revolver still rests on the table, and he grabs it, peering through the panes of glass in the back door. 

There’s nothing there--nothing out of place, but then he hears the crash again and sees the accompanying movement from the far corner of the house: An overturned storage tote that he had once used to catch rainwater lurches and slides over the worn decking, trapping something beneath the opaque plastic shell. 

Jesse grips the door knob with one hand, the revolver in the other, but after a moment's consideration, he leaves the gun on the table and pulls the door open wide.

He approaches the tote with more fortitude in his limbs than his mind, anticipating a ferocious lunge and snarling teeth. He upends the tote, flinging it away, and stumbles back, but there aren’t any snarling teeth to scramble from; only a fawn that can’t be more than a few days old. It bleats its sad story, and Jesse listens, offering it comfort in the way of a few nonsensical croons and some scritches behind its ears. 

It’s the most Jesse’s talked in ages, and his voice, rough with disuse, breaks his unintended vow with silence--his closest companion as of late, for better or for worse, though honestly, it’s only been for worse. 

Jesse fetches a bowl of water for the little calf, who drinks voraciously, as well as the ratty blanket from the couch, which he wraps around it. 

He’d read up on the wildlife of the area when he’d first moved here, and he knows well enough that its mother is most likely nearby. It’s just a matter of waiting for her.

Time is all that Jesse has left in this world—save for the plan he’s building up to—so he certainly has some to spare for this babe.

He dons his boots and parka, carries the little fawn out twenty feet or so from his house, near a shrub, and curls up with it in the patchy snow. 

Hours pass. 

The cold sinks in deeper as the sky clouds over, and the sun begins its early descent towards the horizon, but the little fawn’s mom has yet to show. 

Jesse nods for a bit. He knows he dreams of his mom, but it’s in vague terms. He’s not fighting with her, as was befitting of most of their relationship. However, the abstraction fades beyond recollection as soon as he opens his eyes, leaving him with a peace that’s almost completely foreign to him these days.

As he wakes fully, he realizes with a start that the fawn is absent from his side, and he panics momentarily, worrying that a predator has dragged the poor thing off while he’d slept on, useless as its guard.

Movement in his periphery draws his attention then, and just a few yards away, at the cusp of the thicket, stands the baby deer, confident alongside its mother. She gazes back at him with a primitive recognition so profound, a connection so utterly poignant, it’s beyond Jesse’s spiritual capacity to explain. 

A breathless whimper rushes from him unintended, a testament of his agony and awe, and it breaks the moment. The mother and her fawn dart away at the noise, leaping towards the woods with only the whistle of the wind and the whisper of the long grass at their heels. 

Jesse drags himself up off the frozen ground, and slumps back toward the house in search of whatever meager scraps his refrigerator has to offer. After a lackluster but sufficient dinner, he climbs into the warmth of his shower, lets the water cascade over him, and resolves to revise his plans, at least temporarily. 

* * *

Diane twists the shower valve and towels off, steeling herself for her day. She’s vowed to finish cleaning out Jesse’s room, which has sat unfinished for the past two weeks since she started it. She knows she’s deliberately avoiding it, and likely, Adam does too. He doesn’t press when she feeds him her excuses along with dinner, even when he hasn’t asked. 

But today is the day, she insists. She’s finished her housework and gardening early so as not to let it distract her, and the garbage cans have just been emptied, waiting to be filled.

After she dresses and pulls her hair back, she heads into the room that both beckons and haunts her, standing in the doorway for a moment until she decides what, first, to tackle.

It’s the closet, and fortunately, but yet somehow disappointingly, she finds nothing sentimental to cry over or to hang onto. 

The hanging hoodies all have dust on their shoulders. She brushes them off, and they go in the bag. She hopes somebody somewhere will benefit from these clothes more than her son ever did. 

Next go the items in the nightstand. The ease of which she's able to toss packets of condoms and bubblegum, a pipe, a few lighters, and some fast-food receipts (the seedier evidence of her son's existence) comes as a relief.

It’s when she reaches the back of the bottom drawer, that she takes pause. It’s a photo of her and Jesse, aged about eight, from a trip to Four Corners, before Jake was born. She turns it over, reads the unstable handwriting of a child on the back that says 'Mommy and Me' with a heart. At that, she breaks down. 

It doesn’t really matter, she grasps, at that moment, if she’d done a perfect job or not. She’d loved her son, she’d tried, and her hurt is real. She may never know what became of the baby she birthed, of the child she raised, of the young man who fell from her nest. 

She realizes now that she’s been holding off grieving and mourning because of that uncertainty; holding onto to her anger and doubt to fill that void, but now she knows what she must do.

After dinner, she pours herself a generous glass of wine, pours one for Adam, too. She leads him upstairs, and when he laughs, and questions why, she opens Jesse’s door. 

It falls open silently, to reveal a clean and pleasant room. She’s purchased new bedding, added a small and tasteful vase of artificial flowers to the nightstand, but when Adam sees the new frames, he’s drawn to them, and Diane follows behind. 

The wall, previously covered in posters, obscenities and filth, now displays a collection of art, all rendered by Jesse, along with the photo she’d found in the drawer. Adam chokes back his emotions, and Diane clasps his hand in hers, giving it a squeeze.

“It’s time to let go,” she says, and in the quiet of the room, they say goodbye.


End file.
